Wetlands: A Natural Defense Against Climate-Induced Flooding
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/bcelnfe775Keywords:
wetlands, ecosystem services, flood mitigation, climate change adaptation, natural infrastructure, flood risk reduction, economic value of ecosystems, wetland conservation, hydrological regulationReferences
Costanza, R., de Groot, R., Sutton, P., van der Ploeg, S., Anderson, S. J., Kubiszewski, I., Farber, S., & Turner, R. K. (2014). Changes in the global value of ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change, 26, 152–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.04.002
de Groot, R. S., Brander, L. M., van der Ploeg, S., Costanza, R., Bernard, F., Braat, L., Christie, M., Crossman, N., Ghermandi, A., Hein, L., Hussain, S., Kumar, P., McVittie, A., Portela, R., Rodriguez, L. C., ten Brink, P., & van Beukering, P. (2012). Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units. Ecosystem Services, 1(1), 50–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2012.07.005
Fairchild, T., Bennett, W., Smith, G., Day, B., Skov, M., Möller, I., Beaumont, N., Karunarathna, H., & Griffin, J. (2021). Coastal wetlands mitigate storm flooding and associated costs in estuaries. Environmental Research Letters, 16, Article ac0c45. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac0c45
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2023). Climate change 2021: The physical sciences basis. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896
Laruelle, G. G., Rosentreter, J. A. & Regnier, P. Extrapolation-based regionalized re-evaluation of the global estuarine surface area. Estuaries and Coasts 48, 34 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-024-01463-3
Li, X., & Tsigaris, P. (2024). The global value of freshwater lakes. Ecology Letters, 27(2), e14388. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14388
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). (2024, October 23). The effects of climate change. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/effects/
National Geographic. (2025). Wetland. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/wetland/
NOAA. (2025). Severe weather 101: Floods. https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/floods/
Rezaie, A., Loerzel, J., & Ferreira, C. (2020). Valuing natural habitats for enhancing coastal resilience: Wetlands reduce property damage from storm surge and sea level rise. PLOS ONE, 15(1), Article e0226275. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226275
Russi, D., ten Brink, P., Farmer, A., Badura, T., Coates, D., Förster, J., Kumar, R., & Davidson, N. (2013). The economics of ecosystems and biodiversity (TEEB) for water and wetlands. Institute for European Environmental Policy; Ramsar Secretariat. https://www.teebweb.org/publication/teeb-for-water-and-wetlands/
Sauer, J., Grimm, N., Barbosa, O., Cook, E., Mustafa, A., Kunkel, K., McPhearson, T., & Ballinger, A. (2024). Estimating combined effects of climate change and land cover change on water regulation services of urban wetlands in Valdivia, Chile. Earth's Future, 12, Article e2023EF003801. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023ef003801
Sheng, P., Paramygin, V., Rivera-Nieves, A., Zou, R., Fernald, S., Hall, T., & Jacob, K. (2022). Coastal marshes provide valuable protection for coastal communities from storm-induced wave, flood, and structural loss in a changing climate. Scientific Reports, 12, Article 6850. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06850-z
Sun, F., & Carson, R. (2020). Coastal wetlands reduce property damage during tropical cyclones. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 57195725. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915169117
Tabari, H. (2020). Climate change impact on flood and extreme precipitation increases with water availability. Scientific Reports, 10, 13768. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70816-2
Tong, H., Cao, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2025). Optimization and evaluation of wetland ecological networks for mitigating urban flooding. Water, 17, 1461. https://doi.org/10.3390/w17101461
United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2025). Classification and types of wetlands. https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/classification-and-types-wetlands#undefined
United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2025). Why are wetlands important? https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/why-are-wetlands-important
Watson, K., Ricketts, T., Galford, G., Polasky, S., & O’Neil-Dunne, J. (2016). Quantifying flood mitigation services: The economic value of Otter Creek wetlands and floodplains to Middlebury, VT. Ecological Economics, 130, 1624. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.05.015
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Future Earth: A Student Journal on Sustainability and Environment

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) License. This license allows others to share and adapt the work, provided proper attribution is given to the original author and the work's initial publication in this journal, and that it is used for non-commercial purposes under the same terms. Authors may also enter into separate, additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., posting it to an institutional repository or including it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of its original publication in this journal.
Authors are encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal websites) both prior to and during the submission process, as this can foster productive exchanges and increase the visibility and citation of their work (See The Effect of Open Access).
